Open Enterprise: The PostgreSQL Open Source Database Blog from EnterpriseDB

Recap of the TheServerSide Java Symposium.

EnterpriseDB was a Platnium Sponsor of TheServerSide Java Symposium Conference last week. Here are a few key takeaways and highlights from the conference:

- It was great to be at a Java conference that was entirely based on Server-side Java. Server-side Java is one of my few technical passions (as I mentioned in previous posts, PostgreSQL has become another).

-James Gosling gave a great keynote. It had been difficult for me to not see him at JavaOne this past fall. I loved seeing him together with the Java crowd again. His keynote was very forward looking as he discussed his thoughts on the industry particularly around cloud computing. James was entertaining and insightful as ever.

-There was a panel specifically about the JCP. Patrick Curran, Reza Raman and James Gosling were the panelist. Cameron McKenzie,from TheServerSide.com was the show’s MC and moderator. For the most part, tough questions were asked and answered. At the end of the day, I felt as though decisions had been made, Java and the JCP were moving forward again. All though it is now with out some of the previous industry stalwarts such as Doug Lea. A quick check of the TIOBE index shows that Java is in good shape. It will be interesting to see how Java EE and Java SE progress over the next year. I must confess, I am disappointed to not see more Java EE 6 certifications at this point. However, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Resin has passed the Web profile TCK.

-In terms of conference themes, cloud is definitely all the rage this year. It was prevalent in every keynote and had it’s own dedicated track.

-Oracle was also a Platinum sponsor at the event. Jerome Dochez, the GlassFish architect gave several good talks on GlassFish, including the vendor sponsored keynote. As usual, he was great. I got the overall impression that GlassFish was in great shape, which naturally made me feel good. In the coming weeks, I plan to write another blog on how to get it working quickly and easily with PostgreSQL.

-I spent time at the Resin booth. This is a product I am definitely going to check out. Many people at the conference told me it is a great application server.

-Some vendors who were notably missing from the conference were JBoss and Cloudbees. This was disappointing because I wanted to hear more about their product plans and what they are doing these days. Although Cloudbees did not attend the conference, they got a lot of love from James Gosling in his keynote. Hudson (Kohsuke Kawaguchi the creator of Hudson works for Cloudbees) also got love from Rod Johnson in his track keynote on cloud computing.

-I attended Rod Johnson’s track keynote on cloud computing. All though I disagreed strongly with some of the things he said, I genuinely enjoyed the keynote. Code2Cloud also looks rather interesting. As for what I disagreed with, Rod claimed that there were three platforms that would be relevant in the cloud: “Spring, Ruby on Rails and .NET”. I will give him .NET. I will even give him Spring as being relevant in the cloud. As for Ruby on Rails, every indication I can see is that it has a small and passionate community. However, it is no longer seeing the growth it saw several years ago. If you believe in the TIOBE Index as a status of how programming languages are doing, Ruby has seen a decline year over year. Also, missing from his list was Java EE. With the release of Java EE 6, the complexity issues that led to the creation of Spring no longer exist. Java EE 7 if executed with pace will definitely be a very relevant platform for cloud computing.

So, on to what I was there to do:

EnterpriseDB gave me the pleasure of delivering a vendor technical session. My talk was entitled “PostgreSQL from Development to Deployment.” It is the pre-cursor for a talk Bruce Momjian and Robin Schumacher will be giving at MySQL Con in less than a month. I felt very comfortable with the audience at the show since I have been working either on or with Server-side Java products and technologies ever since they appeared.

Several days before the conference began, much to my disappointment it became clear that Karen Tegan Padir would not be able to deliver the vendor keynote. As a company, we made the decision to have me present the keynote. I was a bit nervous going into this given it has been a years since I had spoken to an audience of this size. Karen and I spent some time discussing what I should talk about. From there, I spent several nights reflecting on my time at Sun building the Java Platform; what went well and what did not. For those of you who don’t know, I was the first Java Consultant / ISV Engineer hired by Sun’s Javasoft division and was part of the original Java management and architecture teams for the J2EE platform. In the keynote, I described what went well and what did not go well in my nearly 15 year adventure with Java. I explained the similarities I am now seeing in the development of the cloud platform and how the lessons we learned developing the Java will apply to the cloud.

From what I could tell, the keynote was well received. Several folks came up to me and said it was a great presentation for this audience. I had plenty of friends in the audience who would have been more than willing to tell me if it was a dud. I actually got a laugh (at a joke!) during the presentation. However, the biggest indication that it was a success was that my technical session on PostgreSQL that followed the keynote was extremely well attended. We had about 54 people show up. Not bad given that I would estimate the overall conference attendance to be about 350 people.

There was also plenty of interest in PostgreSQL especially after I explained the history of the source code. A lot of folks came by our booth to talk about it further. It took me back to 1996 when I first started talking to folks about Java. Although PostgreSQL has been around for a very long time, I feel as though many people are just starting to discover it as though it were brand new. For those of you who attended the session, I will be writing a blog on a how to set up the demo.

In summary, it was great to spend time with old colleagues and friends. It was also great to make a bunch of new friends and hear what people have been up to in the world of Java. However, it was tough to lose so badly at blackjack!

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